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1 (displacing Steven Spielbergs standing record withJaws,at age 27).
He quickly signed on to direct aStar Warsspinoff plotted around Boba Fett but passed onVenomandReady PlayerOne(twice).
He never stopped writing his own material, though.
He cut his directing fee in half and forewent any compensation as editor to mountCapone.
But Trank is quick to dismiss the idea thatCaponeshould be viewed as a comeback story.
As the director tells it, he simply made a movie he wanted to watch.
Youhave calledCaponeyour first movie.
I felt very insecure about writing an entire script from start to finish.
So we worked on that.
And he eventually had to take another job.Max Landisand I didnt really like each other.
But I hit him up, told him aboutChronicle.
And as I was describing it to him, I could tell he was really engaged.
When I got to that part, Max interrupted me and was like, No, no, no!
What you want to do is to have Andrew save him.
And then that brings them closer together.
And I was like, Oh, shit!
Look, [Max] is not a good person by any means.
But he had a good idea.
So after that, we were kind of married together on this project.
He likes to get ahead of everybody.
Im not the kind of person to spend my energy to just be like, Thats not true.
So everybody ended up giving Max Landis complete credit forChronicle.
So why a movie about Al Capone?Im not like an Al Capone fanboy by any means.
Im a fan of the history.
But it was never some bucket-list [item] to make a movie about Al Capone.
I was very down on myself.
I was having a lot of issues just looking in the mirror.
I just didnt like me.
I was so disappointed with how everything turned out.
I was working on all of the most spectacular, once-in-a-lifetime, bigger-than-life projects, likeStar WarsandFantastic FourandVenom.
It was such a big life.
And there I was, like, nobodys calling me anymore.
Every day that passed felt quieter and quieter, to the point where I was having trouble sleeping.
I was back to zero, back to square one.
I started to think about Al Capone after he was released from Alcatraz.
Him sitting there in his backyard, puffing on a cigar.
That was the end of his life.
Plagued by mental deterioration from neurosyphilis, physically falling apart and haunted by displaced memories.
I started writing it as this experiential story where there were no flashbacks.
Prior toFantastic Four, Hollywood had been in a huge rush to anoint you the next J.J. Abrams.
You had your pick of projects.
Its almost like a station of success these days to get offered aStar Warsmovie and you got one.
What would any one of us do if they were in my shoes?
I thought it was some version of destiny: that this is what I was meant to do.
This is exactly what I was supposed to be doing.
Im the chosen one.I dont want the chosen one thing to be taken out of context.
I know how a lot of the tweets of the article will put it out there.
Then people are going to be like, Hes a dick!
Help me understand your selection process withFantastic Four.
Before boarding that project, you did some development withVenomandShadow of the Colossus.
You turned downReady Player Onetwice.
These are all big projects.
I dont personally know the Safdie brothers.
Im a huge fan of them.
Because the world needs more films that are coming from that authentic place in that way.
Everybody has a different place where they make sense of what theyre contributing to cinema.
So I just assumed that I needed to be the person to go for it.
There was nothing to suggest you were going to do anything other than follow success with another success.
You were actively trying to sort of subvert the tropes of the genre.
So on all ends, everything was mismanaged.
I was steamrolling for what I wanted.
Such as refusing to take creative advisories from the executives during preproduction.Yeah.
I felt bitterly stubborn.
Heres a property that it seemed like nobody in Hollywood wanted to touch.
Simultaneously, I could have been doing a lot of other different movies.
Then theres the reshoots.
The studio didnt like your cut and was determined to do things its way.
Your producers were on set effectively directing the enactment of script pages you hadnt approved.
Theres not much I could do about it.
My compliance and compromise toward what was going on was too little, too late.
Which was the tactic I had never, never used before that point.
Just being really numb.
My ex-wife is a really, really good friend of Quentin Tarantinos.
Quentin was so nice to me.
He knew what was going on, but he didnt bring it up.
Hes a great filmmaker.
Its emotional looking back at that.
If it werent for that day, God, I dont know what I wouldve done.
At least for a moment, it pulled me out of the darkness.
Are you at liberty to discuss yourStar Warsspinoff?
Ive signed a lot of NDAs, and I respect those NDAs.
I also have a great deal of respect for everybody at Lucasfilm and Disney.
People were talking like, This movie is probably not going to be good.
I had a meeting with Kathy where it seemed likely I wasnt going to proceed.
But she was nice enough to leave the ball in my court.
Well, lets sleep on it throw in of a thing.
Theyre giving me a professional courtesy by allowing me to walk.
It was sad because we had just so much fun for two years collaborating on this.
So we put out that piece forDeadline.
And then, wildly enough, like an hour later, there was a massive story that came out.
At that point, I had no control over that narrative.
In that time period, I did make some good friends.
But I was very, very, very closed off to most people.
I signed so many NDAs.
I was involved with the biggest projects that everybody wanted to know what was going on with.
So there was that pressure.
But I wasnt going around being Mr. Nice Guy either.
I wasnt being very political.
I didnt have those tools yet to know how to really do that.
They were really, really excited when I came on the project.
I was a dick about that.
It sounds like its important to you to really own what you did.
To own the behavior that caused your predicament.How could it not?
That would be, I think, the true marking of a sociopath.
In the years followingFantastic Four, you refused to accept the hired-gun directing work that came your way.
You got divorced, suffered depression.
You were overweight and smoking two packs of cigarettes a day.
Tell me about that place that you found yourself in.It was just being in the void.
When that came into my head, I stopped blaming everybody else.
Prior to that, before I started writingFonzoCapone I was very much blaming other people.
Whos the bad guy?
So I faced myself, in that sense.
I started going back into therapy with that in mind.
And my main question to my new therapist was, Is it okay to start over?
Can I become the person who Idolike?
Or is this just who I am?
Am I just going to be this bitter, self-righteous, manic, steamrolling person?
Or is this something I can work on?
When it comes to Capone, hes a character whose glory days are behind him.
Hes in a kind of exile.
Hes paid his debt to society.
Hes trying to make some sense of the events of his life.
The end of the Al Capone story could just be the beginning of my new story.
And that was the inner encouragement that I needed to have.
To find a way to continue to believe in myself every day.
To not give up.
